What's The Worst That Could Happen?

61

Max dreamt of Elsie Brenstid, the brewer’s daughter. She still loved him, but she wanted him to drink warm beer. Then the phone rang. Odd; it was an American phone, not British. Then there were excited voices, disturbances somewhere, and Max opened his eyes. The burglar!

Where am I? Las Vegas, the Gaiety, cottage one, waiting for the burglar. Dark in this bedroom, the door outlined in light. But all the lights in the cottage had been switched off when at last he’d come to bed, too exhausted by tension to stay up any longer.

He’d been sleeping in most of his clothes, having taken off only pants and shoes. Now he hurried back into both, listening to the raised voices outside. What was going on? Was this the burglar, or wasn’t it? Why didn’t somebody come in here to tell him what was happening?

Max hurried from the bedroom, just a second before the bathroom window behind him was pushed open and a dark figure, made cumbersome by what he was wearing, climbed cautiously inside.

The scene in the living room was utter confusion. His guards moved this way and that, bumping into one another, hands hovering near holstered sidearms, as they stared at doors and at draped windows, waiting for who knows what. Other guards jittered in the open doorway, looking stunned; the darkness beyond them was full of running people and voices shouting.

On the telephone in the conversation area was Earl Radburn, looking both messier and more furious than Max had ever seen him. The messiness he remarked on first, because Earl was always so neat, so inhumanly perfect in his appearance. But look at him now, grease-smeared, pebble-dotted, dirt-daubed. He looked as though he’d been rolling around in parking lots, for God’s sake.

And as filthy as he was, that’s how angry he was. Enraged. Yelling into the phone, demanding action, finally slamming the receiver down, spinning around, glaring at Max, shrieking, “Well, this is what we get!”

“What we get? Earl? What’s going on here?”

“The casino was robbed!”

Max couldn’t believe it. Robbed? The casino? Stunned, he looked down at his right hand, and the ring was still there, where it was supposed to be. It was still there.

So what could have gone wrong? “Earl? Robbed the casino? Who did? And what on earth for?”

Acidly, Earl said, “For the money, if you ask me. Probably two million, maybe more.”

“The money? But—But it was this ring he was after!”

“That’s the goddam beauty of it,” Earl snarled, and with some astonishment (and resentment) Max realized that Earl Radburn was mad at him, at Max Fairbanks, at his employer! “You’ve got us all,” Earl snarled, “bending ourselves out of shape to keep an eye on you and that goddam ring, and that’s just the chance those sons of bitches needed! It couldn’t have worked out better if you were in it with them!”

“Which he was, of course,” said a voice from the doorway.

Max turned, blinking, trying to absorb one astonishment after another, and be damned if it wasn’t that insane New York City policeman, Klematsky, whatever his name was. Walking in here, bold as brass, with a pair of Las Vegas uniformed cops behind him.

Max shook his head at this new wonder, saying, “What are you doing here?”

One of the Las Vegas cops said, “You’ve got yourself a strong gasoline smell out there.”

But nobody listened to him; there was too much else going on. And particularly what was going on was Detective Klematsky, who came over to Max, smiled in a knowing fashion, and said, “Been busy, haven’t you? Up to your old tricks.”

“What now, Klematsky?” Max demanded. “I have no time for you and your nonsense now, this hotel has just been robbed.”

“Which you’ll be telling us all about, a little later,” Klematsky said. “Or was this robbery, while you were actually in residence here, another of your coincidences?”

“What? What?”

“I was going to get here a little later this morning,” Klematsky went on. “I didn’t figure the local department to wake me at four-thirty, but that’s okay. Max Fairbanks, you are under arrest for grand theft, filing false statements and insurance fraud.”

“What? What?”

“Here is the warrant for your arrest,” the insane and implacable Klematsky went on, “and here is the extradition from a Nevada judge. Come along, we’ll have a nice little cell for you to wait in until our flight back to New York.”

“Get your hands off me! You’re out of your mind!”

Max flailed around, not wanting to be touched, and inadvertently bopped Klematsky on the nose. Klematsky, no man to be trifled with, reached for his blackjack.

And that’s when the Battle-Lake caught fire.